Library - VCA Guidance

VCA Guidance

The Verified Conservation Area (VCA) Registry recognises the area-based conservation actions of individuals, communities, companies and others. It is open to any area – marine or terrestrial – that has a conservation programme as set out by this Standard.

The VCA Standard sets out the requirements for registering an area as a VCA.
[Published: 2018]

The conservation actions in the plan are well elaborated and represent the activities in the field. The focus on soil conservation and restoration of the natural ground cover will cope with the long term effects of erosion and climate change. Sometimes they are still experimental in order to find the best solutions, for example the green cover, wind breaks, check dams, contour lines. Best practices and results should convince the farmers about the way to manage the farm more soil- and biodiversity friendly. The efforts to re-establish original vegetation on degraded mountain slopes are well under way. More emphasis should be given to exotic species and to the regulation of the hunting in the area.
The planned actions are coherent, realistic and strategic; the actions are monitored and the monitoring procedures are robust. My overall assessment of the effectiveness of the area’s CMP is that the plan is realistic and the actions coherent, strategic and realistic. The area’s CMP is compliant with the VCA Standard as explained and interpreted in the attached VCA landscape standard.
[Published: 2018]

Alvelal has an area based conservation programme that includee actions to use living natural resources sustainably as well as actions to preserve, maintain, restore and enhance the area’s natural environment.
[Published: 2018]

This Conservation Management Plan has been developed by Alvelal Association for the VCA Registry.

This plan is integrated by an initial diagnosis, which describes the Alvelal territory located in the southeast of Spain, its geology, soils, hydrography, vegetation and fauna, as well as the landscape and land uses throughout history. A second part describes the action plan, with the conservation objectives, the actions to develop those objectives and the indicators we use to measure the success of the plan.

The actions explained in this section explain in detail what we intend to do to restore out landscape. In addition to reforestation of natural areas by planting endemic species, we aim to clear /thin out the current vast forests of invasive species, and to increase organic matter in the soil to enhance soil fertility and to increase water retention, both positively impacting biodiversity. Through hydrological corrections we aim to retain water and to create biodiversity hotspots for vegetation, insects, birds and all species to thrive. We will place insect hotels to allow for habitats of different insects in the current monoculture of pines, allowing for pollination of both natural vegetation and productive crops.
[Published: 2018]

The Lizard Lane provides an important corridor. The VCA status could strengthen the wider conservation importance by considering to expand the corridor with the three larger conservation areas under one VCA regime.

The audit considers the management plan compliant with the VCA Standard. During the coming year the foreseen actions are the reconstruction of the area with reshaping if the fringes, restoration of the heath and removal of the exotic species in the field and the construction of a small-animal passage under the regional highway.
[Published: 2018]

This CMP contains the following parts: an introduction that informs about the context of this conservation area and its action programme; an overview of the area and its management organization; a description of the biodiversity baseline condition; a Conservation SWOT analysis and stakeholder engagement; and a description of priority conservation actions, targets and monitoring scheme.
Submitted by Vitens N.V. , Zwolle, The Netherlands
[Published: 2018]

This CMP contains the following parts: an introduction that informs about the context of this conservation area and its action programme; an overview of the area and its management organization; a description of the biodiversity baseline condition; a Conservation SWOT analysis and stakeholder engagement; and a description of priority conservation actions, targets and monitoring scheme.
Submitted by Vitens N.V. , Zwolle, The Netherlands (January 2018)
[Published: 2018]

As its title suggests, this study sets out to investigate and present alternative ways to support private land conservation in the EU. This means that it dedicates comparatively little attention to “conventional” approaches, such as public subsidies for private land users (e.g. agri-environmental payment schemes), regulatory stipulations that limit the use of private land (e.g. species conservation law or environmental impact assessments) or participatory management planning processes for protected areas in private ownership. Instead, this study focuses on the more “exotic”, but nevertheless promising tools for private land conservation. As will be shown, their exoticism is mostly owned to the fact that their application is not yet widely distributed in the EU, but does not mean that their underlying concepts are far-fetched. It is hoped that the case studies presented here will serve as role models that lead to a wider application of private land conservation policies in the EU.Definition of key terms.
Alternative Ways to Support Private Land Conservation - Report to the European Commission, 2015
[Published: 2015]

The purpose of this scorecard is to assist governments, donors and NGOs to investigate and record significant aspects of a PA financing system – its accounts and its underlying structural foundations – to show both its current health and status and to indicate if the system is holistically moving over the long-term towards an improved financial situation. The scorecard is designed for national systems of PAs but could be used by sub-national eg state, regional or municipal or networks of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).
Financial Sustainability Scorecard for National Systems of Protected Areas (2nd Edition) - UNDP, New York, January 2010
[Published: 2010]

This groundbreaking Report compares and aggregates official financial data and qualitative insights about the health of Protected Area (PA) financial sustainability for 20 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. Locally and regionally, the PAs analysed provide direct and indirect benefits over their combined area for a population of 564 million people in these 20 countries. Globally, LAC PA systems contain and support many important benefits in the areas of biodiversity conservation, human development, and, increasingly, ecosystems services to manage carbon sequestration.
Financial Sustainability of Protected Areas in Latin America and the Caribbean: Investment Policy Guidance - Andrew Bovarnick et al, UNDP, 2010
[Published: 2010]